Ghost of the Father, Sins of the Son
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: A year into his reign, and Valerian still couldn't escape the shadow of his father. Which, granted, wasn't the worst problem he faced, as Amon's forces rampaged across the Koprulu sector.


**Ghost of the Father, Sins of the Son**

Korhal had once been called the jewel in the Confederacy's crown. Valerian Mengsk figured if that was the case, then the jewel had become cracked long ago.

The planet had been bombed to hell in 2491. In 2500, it had become the throne world of the Terran Dominion, only for that throne to be shattered by the UED. A month later, the throne had been returned to Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, but for the world to be devastated again by the same zerg who'd helped him claim it. Five years after that, those zerg had come back to the world to finish the job their queen had started. And now, a year after that, the planet had been attacked again by fanatics and their hybrid abominations. And while Korhal had managed to survive that, just as it had survived everything else, how much longer it could survive was another matter. Because while the palace was still standing, while Augustgrad was still standing, however damaged, the same couldn't be said for more Dominion worlds that he cared to list.

Only someone had made the list. A list that he had displayed on his desk monitor. Small worlds. Small outposts. Some of them he'd never even heard of until today. But all of them said the same thing. "Overrun." "Heavy casualties." "Unidentified enemy." More words and slogans that added to the horror of the images the reports had carried with them. Death. Destruction. At the hands of terrans, zerg, and protoss alike, and in cases, working together.

_If only that was the strangest thing you'd seen in your life, _Valerian reflected. He leant back in the chair and looked out the window, as the setting sun turned the sky orange. War made for strange bedfellows, as the saying went. Six years ago, his father had made his bed with the Queen of Blades. One year ago, he'd done the same. Badly damaged as Augustgrad was, he couldn't lie – not all of that damage had been inflicted from the Moebius Corps attack. Some of it had remained from the one Sarah Kerrigan had made. An attack that, at the end of the day, he'd still abetted.

There was a buzz on the desk intercom. He pressed a button and the list was replaced by security cam feed from outside. Seeing who it was, he pressed another button, and the neosteel doors opened. Doors that had been remade after the mess Kerrigan had made here a year ago, and designed to look functionally identical. If it had been the Queen of Blades outside those doors, Valerian had little doubt that she could have torn them open again. Though thankfully, it wasn't Kerrigan who had entered the room.

"Valerian," the admiral said.

Though right now, Matthew Horner wasn't much better. Because in the space of time between Char and Korhal, and the year that had followed since then, Valerian had come to know the man. When he looked like this, when he talked like this…

"More bad news then," Valerian murmured.

Horner said nothing and handed his emperor a data pad. It gave the ruler of the largest terran empire in this sector some small comfort to see that his ability to read people hadn't diminished. Comfort that was instantly subsumed as he saw the statistics Horner had given him.

"Fekk," he whispered.

Horner gave a small smile, and Valerian noticed. "What?" he asked.

He shrugged. "Didn't take you as one for using such language."

"Trust me Matthew, my tongue can get much dirtier." He scrolled down the pad before placing it on the desk between them. "So. Thanks to the zerg, and thanks to Moebius Corps, Korhal's industrial capacity is pretty much shot."

"Pretty much, sir."

"So on one hand we have to rebuild while also fighting off an invasion."

Horner's eyebrows twitched.

"Matthew?" Valerian asked. "What aren't you telling me?"

Horner shrugged. "I've talked with the admiralty, or at least those who want to talk back to a former rebel. Assessments are only preliminary but…" He trailed off, seeing the way Valerian was looking at him. "May I?"

The emperor nodded and let Horner pick up the data pad. A moment later the image had changed to a three-dimensional map of the Koprulu sector. Various star systems were highlighted a variety of colours, corresponding to known territories of terrans, zerg, protoss, and the factions within those species. A colour that didn't correspond to them was black, representing this new enemy the sector faced. Numerous star systems were fully or wholly blacked, along with dates corresponding to their time of arrival.

"So," Valerian said. "We've all lost a lot of ground, and we're contesting even more of it. What's your point?"

"You might not be able to see it sir, but these attacks? They're random," Horner said. "The force behind these attacks? It's striking at targets of opportunity. It arrives, it attacks, and its forces keep fighting until everyone is dead, until they're all dead, or in rare cases, forced to retreat."

"So…the zerg then."

"Even the zerg understand tactics."

Valerian conceded the point. He didn't have time to fully study the map Horner had shown him, but looking at the black areas, at the very least, he could tell that they didn't correspond to one astro-geographic area. Perhaps it came from the ability to have three species at one's beck and call. Perhaps not.

"Fine," Valerian said. "So it's not an invasion. It's slaughter and genocide, and so far, it's knocking us to the curb." He adjusted the data pad and returned to the list Horner had given him earlier. "How do we fix this Matthew? How do we get more men into the fight?"

"Men aren't the problem sir. It's equipment. It's ships. It's vehicles."

"You kept my father busy for five years with only a handful of those things."

"We did. But we were only able to overthrow him with superior numbers. Insectoid, ravenous numbers." A look of distaste flickered on Horner's features. "And while we have report of zerg fighting zerg, Kerrigan's doing her own thing. The protoss are doing their own thing. The Kel-Morians and Umojans are doing their own thing, and whatever the UED may or may not be doing at Sol, I'm not counting on them to appear out of warp space to save us."

It was a sad day for the Dominion when the UED turning up was part of a favourable scenario, Valerian reflected. He studied the list. Shortages. Requisitions. The Dominion had rebuilt itself over four years after the Brood War, but at immense social cost, and even then, had never reclaimed the influence it once had, and had been ravaged by a second war. Given the current situation, the Dominion didn't have four years to rebuild now. From everything he'd read, it didn't even have four months.

"Where's Captain Raynor when you need him?" Valerian murmured.

"Last I heard on Tarsonis. The Raiders are taking the fight to Moebius Corps and-"

"It was a rhetorical question Matthew." Valerian kept reading from the data pad. "Though I could ask you where Mira Han is. Because looking at this, mercenaries might be our only shot."

What little colour there was left in Horner's face. Still, mentions of his 'wife' aside, the colour began to return as he began to speak. "There's another option," he said. "One that we could consider, given the current circumstances…"

Valerian leant back in his chair and gave Horner a small nod.

"We're lacking in arms and armour. We're not lacking in manpower. Put enough men on the ground, stick a gun in their hands, cut out the power armour and gauss rifles…well, they'll die, but they'll take the enemy with them."

Valerian felt a chill rush up his spine.

"And there's also neural resocialization. We could bring that back."

The chill got even chillier. "No," Valerian whispered. "Absolutely not."

"What, sir? The resoc? Or the Patriot Mandate?"

Valerian stared at him. "How did you read about that?"

"I have access to all files within the Dominion Armed Forces sir. I know about the less scrupulous ones."

"Then you know it's something not even my father used, because even he had limits," Valerian said.

Horner snorted. "Limits. Man condemns an entire world to death, rules with an iron fist, but refuses to draft men and women as troopers with carbines because there's something to be said about a Dominion marine in power armour."

"Matthew, if I do this, thousands will die, and-"

"Hundreds of thousands are already dying."

Valerian stared. Horner stood there. And in an instant, Valerian saw the truth. Horner didn't trust him. Not fully. Horner looked at him, and saw the son of a tyrant. It was why Raynor had bolted off to fight the war his way. It was why Horner had insisted he direct the war with minimal oversight. And it was why Horner could propose this and invoke the name of Arcturus Mengsk – hoping he could shame the son into signing off on it.

And Horner knew that he knew. Which, Valerian supposed, was why his face softened slightly. He turned around and looked at the portraits on the wall. The one he focused on was a painting of his father – Arcturus Mengsk, Saviour of Mankind, riding a horse and plunging a lance into a lion. The admiral walked over and stared at it, as if he was at the Augustgrad Interplanetary Gallery.

"I never understood the meaning of this," he murmured. "Why a lion?"

Valerian shrugged, even if Horner couldn't see it.

"I also never understood why you left it up." Horner looked back at him. "I thought you wanted to escape your father's shadow."

"I did, and I do. But…" He paused, choosing his words carefully. "My father founded the Dominion. He ruled it for half a decade. Whatever his deeds, he deserves to be remembered." He got to his feet and walked over to Horner, taking a look at the picture. "Which is why I won't do this. I won't send poorly equipped soldiers out to the frontline to fight aliens from nightmare, and power-armoured brutes. Not now. Not ever."

"Regardless of what it costs?"

Valerian looked at Horner.

"Believe me, I don't want to do this," the admiral continued. "You've spent a year talking about how different you are from Arcturus, and a year acting on those words. But war's war. However history judges you, at least there'll be historians to do that." He drew out a piece of paper from his pocket. "I just need your signature, sir. I can take the flak afterwards if you want."

Valerian stood there, rooted to the spot. Horner had planned this all along. Horner wanted validation for his own moral hypocrisy. The only reason Valerian didn't punch him there and then was because the admiral at least had had the decency to talk to him face to face.

Course if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to punch him at all, but a fire was raging in his belly, and it was making it hard to think straight. Snatching the paper from Horner's hands, Valerian read over it. Recruitment. Conscription for all able-bodied men and women, ages sixteen to forty. Supply of carbines and light armour, two weeks basic. It was the Patriot Mandate, just watered down. Though, seeing one particular line, not as far as Valerian wanted.

"Valerian, if you need time…"

"Time," he grunted. He walked back to his desk. "Time. One year, and I'm already out of time." He glanced at the painting of his father on an imaginary horse. "Even now, I can't escape my father's shadow. He died in this room, and it's like he's still with me." He sat down. "And now, you want me to do something that'll drag the Dominion back to his rule."

"If it means saving the Dominion, and mankind? Yes," Horner said.

Valerian leant back in the chair, and frowned. "You've changed," he murmured.

Horner shrugged. "Time under a different flag does that to a man."

"Of course." Valerian shifted his gaze to another painting. Of a woman with golden hair and a sad look. One who'd been under a different flag to his father…and whom he had always looked up to. In ways different from Arcturus Mengsk, but no less valuable.

Which was why he felt pain in his chest and a quiver in his hand as he drew out a pen and signed the document. He might save his people. He might save mankind. But in doing so, he'd damned himself, and dishonoured his mother. And the tragedy of it was, he'd come to realize that he could live with that.

"Here," Valerian said, before crossing out one of the amendments and handing it back. "It's your show."

Horner looked at the document. "No resoc?"

"No. Never. I won't ruin minds to save bodies."

Horner pocketed the paper and nodded, before giving a salute. He waited, as if he expected Valerian to say something, but the emperor offered no words. Silently, Horner turned and exited out of the office, the door's opening with a hiss, and closing with a clang.

_Damn you, _Valerian reflected, not sure if he was referring to his father, Horner, or the force that was directing this attack against the sector. _Damn you all._

He looked out towards the western window, expecting to see the sun. But it was too late.

The sky was dark. The sun had set.

* * *

_A/N_

_So Arcturus Mengsk is going to be a commander in Co-op Missions. That's neat...I guess._

_Okay, pretty sure I've said this before, but regardless, Co-op Missions bugs me in the sense that it's non-canon, even though you wouldn't have to change much to make it canon. On the other hand, it's easier to sell characters like Tychus and Zeratul rather than "person who isn't canonically dead" and all that. And to be fair, his 'commander fantasy' does have a nice twist to it. Would have preferred to have Valerian, but I think there's room for him with an Umojan-themed army._

_Anyway, drabbled this up._


End file.
